Embracing imagination as an act of faith helped Maya Hawke find a new level of self confidence, she tells Best Fit for this week’s digital cover profile.
Chaos Angel – Hawke’s third album – builds on the density of her 202 debut record Blush and the modernity of 2022’s Moss, while staggering out of the tunnel of her early twenties as her eyes adjust to the unfamiliar. “I was on the precipice of a major transition, in many ways,” she shares with Best Fit. “Making this record was about finding love for parts of myself and decisions I’ve made that I had a lot of guilt, shame and regret for. It’s about saying goodbye to a certain kind of self-hatred while I was learning about dating and relationships while my career was just beginning. I’ve finally moved into a space of more self-forgiveness and calm.”
“Between each record, I’m closing the distance between the music that I hear in my head and the music that is coming out of the speakers,” adds Hawke. It was an effort between herself and her partner Christian Lee Hutson who has worked closely with Phoebe Bridgers throughout her career. “I trusted Christian to really make me feel like this was mine, and to advocate for me and help me figure out what I wanted in a way that it wasn’t just a great idea, it was my idea – which might not even be a great idea, but it was the only idea that was right for that project.”
Read the full story by Sophie L. Walker now over on Best Fit.
Body Meat experiments at the fringes of music
It’s in Chris Taylor’s nature to be busy. “This is the culmination of quite literally thousands of hours of work…so I need everyone to know,” he earnestly beams. Taylor's debut album, Starchris – due this August on Partisan Records – is the recipient of this time. Under the moniker Body Meat, Taylor has created an unsettled sonic palette, spasmodically exploring the intersections of electronic, dance, trap, and a dash of metal. But perhaps the most unsettled thing of all is his productivity.
Obsessions have driven Taylor's creativity for as long as he can remember. His first recollection of this phenomenon was when he was younger. Being given drawing pads by his mother, he recalls, "I would draw for hours and hours." Sketching the same thing repeatedly, it was a quest for perfection that Taylor remembers with striking clarity. "I used to draw this one dinosaur for six hours over and over again, and throw away all the old ones that were right,” he tells me. His passion coming forth through mechanically-driven means was a precursor to his future as Body Meat.
Being surrounded by music at a young age with a pianist mother and a bass-playing father, it was natural for Taylor to enter the musical world. "She always had this Rhodes piano. I remember it being broken, but we used to play with that," he reflects. But with the clan moving around, the piano became a victim of Taylor’s unsettled childhood: "She had got rid of it somehow. We probably needed money," he says chuckling drily. "But music was just always around. It's funny though, because I never really thought I would make music. I didn't feel like I was gonna be good enough."
From the interplay of these fears and the relentless productivity that lives inside Taylor is born an inner struggle between the creator and the musician. "I don't know if I've ever really felt like a musician," he tells me. "I feel like when you say the word 'musician', you think of someone that can make a song fast, or play something well. I think I may be more on the creator side because I've been so many different things - it's just the audio side of things is a bigger part than the others."
But most of all, Taylor sees himself as pushing a creative boundary which can include his collisions of sound perhaps twinning with proficiency of instruments: "Do I need to be playing all these notes? I just recorded the guitar screeching for three minutes – that's maybe more interesting…sometimes, you just need to shred though," he smirks.
Zsela is on the rise
For Mexican Summer-signed Brooklyn native Zsela, her new album Big For You is an experimental project that stretches her songwriting outside of her comfort zone. Collaborating with Daniel Aged and Gabe Wax, both disparate, cross-genre producers known for their work with Frank Ocean and Kelela, and Soccer Mommy and The War on Drugs respectively, Big For You grounds itself in earthy percussion and low slung bass lines while playing with sinewy pop time signatures.
Despite driving a very intentional creative process, when a choice feels immediate, Zsela relinquishes her grip to follow her instincts. As a title, “Big For You” manifested long before any of the tracks came to life.
“I was thinking about this yesterday, because I never really have a title first,” says Zsela. “Sometimes they’ll come and I’m like ‘That’s a cool idea, cool concept’, but often it traps me [creatively] if I stick to it before I know what it is. Sometimes, you can make creative decisions that feel ahead of your time; you learn from what’s inherent in you.”
Three things to get excited about this week
The book: In his new book Wales: 100 Records – released today – Huw Stephens analyses the highlights of the careers of the most important recording artists that Wales has ever produced, singing in English or Welsh - favourites such as Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Dafydd Iwan, Max Boyce, Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Adwaith and Kelly Lee Owens.
The tribute: Everyone’s getting involved: The Stop Making Sense tribute album released last week via A24, features contributions from Miley Cyrus, Lorde, Blondshell, Kevin Abstract, and more!
The case: This week, the U.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust suit against Live Nation to try and force a split between the ticketing behemoth and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster. The DoJ asserts that the company has an unfair monopoly on the ticketing business and that the breakup of these two entities is in the best interest of fans. The potential ripple effects of this case are hard to understate.
Something Old, Something New
Every week, one of Best Fit's writers or editors share their recommendations of two records they love - one from the past, one from the present. This week, Paul Bridgewater writes on The Replacements’ Pleased to Meet Me (1987) and Jodi Nicholson’s Safe Hands (2023).
Discovering both the back catalogue and the story of The Replacements is a rite of passage I hope every music fan gets to experience. I borrowed Pleased to Meet Me with a dismissive shrug from a school teacher because I liked the cover and they had one of the best definite article names you could ever choose for a band. Their major label debut, Pleased to Meet Me is also the point where the band began to fracture. Guitarist Bob Stinson had all but left the band after clashing with frontman Paul Westerberg - only turning up for one recording session - and the edge they had over the last seven years began to dull. Thus, Pleased to Meet Me is a schmaltzy heart-on-sleeve punk rock mess but it's also one of the most charming records of the 80s. It’s the closest they ever got to radio-friendly, and feels more like a swan song than the two records that followed. If you don’t love and cherish this record, there is no hope for you!
A sonic gulf separates Safe Hands, the new record from North East songwriter Jodie Nicholson, and her 2019 debut Golden Hour. Five years and a pandemic have led Nicholson to a find a neat balance between her elegant vocal and a textural canvas on which she can flex her songwriting muscles. On the record, released last week, Nicholson's voice is bathed in a warmth and swirl of instrumentation, and white heat production with – crucially - lots of space around everything to breathe. It's a record that feels organic and unforced with a tender, soothing edge and has some really spectacular moments that live in the same ballpark as Billie Eilish’s spectacular Hit Me Hard and Soft.
We have three copies of Safe Hands to give away – enter here for a chance to win!
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists – 20 new tracks, top-loaded from the last five days in music and on repeat among out editors and writers right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Esme Emerson, Ain’t, Imogen and the Knife, Joanna Serrat and coverstar Halima.